I am writing today to attempt to make a clear and concise statement about a problem that I see, both in myself and in others, having to do with how we relate to and think about the idea of God, specifically in Christianity. I think that the problem applies to people both inside and outside of the Christian religion, though some Atheists might claim it does not. That’s fine; I don’t intend to write a work of apologetics to help the human race prove that there is a God. I don’t have the credentials (or the desire) to do that. But I am going to write about what I see, and what I see is something that I think is applicable to most people, wherever they feel that they stand spiritually.
What I see is a glut of Christian (and non-Christian) texts that say that the God that exists is a “personal” God, and is to be known in a way similar to the way that we know a person, and longs to have a “personal relationship” with those people that He created. He has a personality, and is a “personal” God, represented on earth in human form as Jesus Christ, who did the necessary work of reconciliation by giving up His life so that we could “know” some other part of God than His wrath. So this is what the voices of spirituality in America are telling us about God – He is “personal”, He longs to know us “personally”, and we can relate to Him on a “personal” level.
However, after I look at that, I don’t have to go far to look at other stuff that doesn’t square with this claim. Or, if it does, then God is a really weird kind of personal being. Of course there are things unique to Him; He is perfect, all-knowing, the Creator, and ultimately not a flawed, self-interested person, and so there are some ways of personally relating that would not be valid with Him. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the idea of relating to Him personally. This relatively simple statement has become enigmatic to many (or, at least, to me) for whatever reason, and needlessly so. If “personal” relation is required, then we should treat God as if He has feelings (which can be broken), desires (which we can ask Him about), goals (which He wants to accomplish), interests (which we can converse with Him on), pleasures (which we should learn), joy and sadness (which we can sympathize with), and so on. However, when I listen to people pray, (by which I simply mean talk to God, whether with bowed knee or with the stroke of a pen, or with any other honest method), I hear things that don’t really help me develop a mental picture of a personal God. And when I listen to people talk about God, I get a mental picture that is more closely related to calculus than to personality. And most of all, when I look at how people live in relation to God, myself included, the impressions I get of God do not resemble a person at all.
God is our closest friend, but no person would refrain from talking to their closest friend. God is our perfect Father, but for some reason we act like we are more responsible for our position in life than He is. God is our brother, but we don’t really know anything about His likes and dislikes, what kinds of cars He likes, and how He keeps His room (in a manner of speaking, of course). God is our companion, but we don’t tell Him about our day. We “love” God, but we act as if His forgiveness is to be taken for granted. God is our friend, but we don’t have to be careful about His feelings. God is greater than anything else, yet there are countless things we anticipate more earnestly than being in His presence.
Ultimately, God is supposed to be all these things, but I think that usually it’s more comfortable for Him to stay in His distant, philosophical context that most of us seem to insist that He stay in. The thing is that if we really did understand God as personal, then for those of us who know Him the entirety of how we think about Him and treat Him would be changed. And for those of us who don’t care to know Him, if we really understood that He is personal and knew what that meant, then there would be no passive indifference to Him. We would openly reject Him and tell Him that He is not welcomed in our home.
Just think about people that you really do know. If someone had wronged you in some unforgivable manner, you would not welcome them. If someone’s presence threatened your lifestyle in ways that you were not prepared to consider, you would make efforts to steer clear of that person; and you would be intentional about it.
However, if God does have a place in your life, then you’ve got to treat Him as His personal nature would require you to – as if He were a person! You’ve got then to give Him the attention He deserves as, well, God, but also as your most significant personal relationship. You’ve got to be considerate of His feelings before you disregard what you know He would tell you. You’ve got to treat Him with gratitude for the sacrifices He’s made for you.
And if you say that you love Him, then you’ve got to treat Him as if you do. I must say that Christians have some of the strangest ways of “loving” God. They tell Him they love Him, and then tell Him to mind His won business. They tell Him they love Him, then annoy Him by intentionally doing things they know He can’t stand. They tell Him they love Him, but then don’t attempt to remember anything He’s said. They tell other people that they love Him, but never tell Him. They love Him, but never talk to Him about anything that is in their heart.
I think that if we loved human beings in the same way that we “love” God most of the time, before long people would be begging us to stop. We’d say that the world’s idea of love is a lot better than Christianity’s. And soon we’d all switch over, and there’d be no more Christian “love” going around. And finally there’d be no more Christians.
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